Designer Behind the World's First Microprocessor

Federico Faggin visited Intel headquarters in late summer of 2011 to share memories from 40 years ago, when teamed up with Ted Hoff and Stan Mazur to create Intel's 4004 chip, which became the world's first single chip microprocessor.

Faggin talks about the day in January 1971, when he first tested the chip and it worked flawlessly. That was the day the microprocessor was born, he says, and today it is at the heart of the Internet revolution. He says the microprocessor has become the tiny speck of intelligence that converges communication, computing and control capabilities, connecting all of our devices from computers to small smartphones.

He has his eye on quantum computing as the next frontier of computing because of potential is beyond what capable with today's mechanical microprocessors. Yet he believes computing will never rival the complexity and capabilities on human intelligence.